Saturday, April 21, 2012

Time Machine: on the grief of friends

I am always torn between writing poems that create 'language wonder' and the impulse to 'console', to make real, to capture the flying slippery Heisenbergian fish that is human experience. Not that these things are mutually exclusive.

I was recently thinking about a friend's loss of her mother and read (on Facebook) a comment by writer Natalee Caple to a friend who was grieving about the sudden death of her brother. The exchange with this woman whom I only know very slightly through some email exchanges, was very touching. The tragedy of her brother's death is terrible and her grief is wrenching. Reading Natalee's heartfelt and consoling words, I had the impulse to write something. To console.

I created this poem inspired by these lines by Natalee and thinking about our friends who are grieving.